Using SNSF Data: A Sustainable Example

28.03.2022

The SNSF publishes a substantial amount of data about its research grants. This data is available to everyone, to discover trends in science, or dig deep into specific topics of interest, such as analysing sustainability research.

In November 2021, a hackathon to explore Swiss research related to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) was organised by CorrelAid Switzerland and the Center for Cognitive and Decision Sciences at the University of Basel. Participants analysed publicly available SNSF grant data, including titles, keywords, abstracts, and disciplines of individual grants, along with basic demographics of grant recipients. They then developed data visualisations to illuminate various aspects of research on SDGs in Switzerland.

The winners of the jury award for best visualisation looked at the percentage of female researchers contributing to each SDG. The audience award went to a visualisation that showed how many of the grants in each SDG came from each of the three main SNSF research areas, and how those grants were distributed across the biggest universities in Switzerland. All visualisations can be seen here.

A variety of datasets are available for download on the SNSF Data Portal. These include grant abstracts, research publications, and use-inspired research output. If you discover interesting insights from SNSF data, we would love to hear about them!

Data, text and code of this data story are available on Github and archived on Zenodo.
DOI: 10.46446/datastory.sustainability-hackathon